Black and White

Reality is the tightprecision of a prismbending clarity intocoloured danceon a white wall.…………………………………………………………………………………………1.You asked me not to think of myself as “white”, and so it’s not the skin colour but the colour of the culture that lies beneath. You face shows the trace of Bedouin and Indian village campfire, of Sufi sage and Islamic warrior with a brush’s whisper of Thai high altar. Your body is keen and hard edged in its delicate symmetry, a small compact fighting machine where you’ve fought the battles of survival with breathtaking courage. There is the small boy whipped and beaten hiding not far behind these smooth edges, and your small boy meets my broken inner child, looks long into the places of the past, you make me cry. My boy child weighs heavy in my arms after year of nurturing, soft baby’s limbs stretched into flexed tones of muscle .…………………………………………………………………………………………..2.Today was the day someone decided to suicide at rush hour, throw their life filled body under the tremor of passing train. As the underground closed and we piled into sweating crowded buses, the driving winter rain rendering surfaces treacherous, no one was much concerned with your splice into Hades. If you’d chosen to die at midday you might have gained a passing prayer from strangers, but as it was all the tears died in exasperation in the eyes of the grey faced mob of commuters hurrying by, and we branched off into a myopic night cursing your unknown name.………………………………………………………………………………………..Death and darkhave no starting point.